


The Interludes

by KarnacasRaven



Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: M/M, The Void
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-08
Updated: 2018-04-08
Packaged: 2019-04-20 06:03:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,935
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14254560
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KarnacasRaven/pseuds/KarnacasRaven
Summary: While Emily Kaldwin tears apart Delilah's inner circle, Corvo Attano's spirit roams the Void.





	The Interludes

**Author's Note:**

> A birthday present for my dearest friend (ꈍ꒳ꈍ)

The statue appears in the Void three years after Delilah punctures her way back into the world, and the Outsider purses his lips. He has not seen such fury on Corvo’s face in a long time.

He touches Corvo’s cheek, warmth blooming under the barest brush of his cold fingers. Corvo groans and sinks to his knees as his spirit is severed from black stone. The Outsider waits.

“Emily,” Corvo rasps, staggering to his feet. “Emily -”

“She is safe, my dear Corvo,” the Outsider answers, though it’s not really a question. “For now.”

Corvo’s dark eyes dart about his surroundings, dizzy and unfocused until his gaze lands on the Outsider. The Outsider expects to see a lot of things in that gaze, worry and anger among them, but there’s hurt too. Betrayal.

“You knew,” Corvo accuses.

The Outsider halts. “I saw a possibility,” he allowed.

“You knew,” Corvo hisses, and he steps forward all clumsy and swings -

The Outsider is in shards before Corvo’s blow lands. Corvo whirls, searching for him, but the Outsider’s voice still catches him by surprise. “Nothing has changed since your last empress, Corvo. My ability to interfere is still limited.”

“You could’ve warned me,” Corvo says. His voice is tight, his teeth grinding, mouth twisted in fury and a harsh crease between his brows. He swings again, steadier on his feet now, though only marginally. “You could’ve told me years ago!”

“As Jessamine could’ve,” the Outsider remarks lightly, after he’s disappeared and reappeared in a cloud of shards and smoke. He doesn’t really _mean_ to be callous, but it comes out that way, and Corvo falters.

“You marked her,” Corvo breathes after a moment, and then the rage returns. “You marked her before me! You knew she was coming!”

“And I marked Daud a decade before that,” the Outsider tells him. “Should I have considered how inconvenient it would be for you before I marked someone? Tell me, Corvo. Are you angry that I marked those who would rise against you, or are you angry that you were so comfortable in your tower, and so vastly unprepared for another of my gifted, that you lost another empress?”

A dozen emotions flit over Corvo’s face, and the Outsider watches how his throat tightens, how his Adam’s apple bobs when he swallows, how his jaw sets as he stalks forward again. This time, he catches Corvo’s wrist instead of disappearing, and Corvo looks surprised at the strength in his grip.

“You are not angry with me,” the Outsider says firmly, no nonsense, and frowns when Corvo shrinks ever so slightly, and pulls against his grasp. “You are upset because you were helpless while someone threatened your empress, and because the magic that helped you keep her safe for so long was stolen from you. You are upset because you know as well as I do that what people chose to do with my mark is their choice, not mine, and because you think it is unfair that you have used it so carefully, only for the sake of keeping your last remaining family close, while others have used it for money and power and revenge. You are not upset with me.”

Corvo’s mouth twists. His eyes are misty. He stops trying to pull away. He says, “She’s my daughter,” in a near whisper, and his voice shakes.

The Outsider lets him loose. Corvo drops to his knees, and he weeps at the Outsider’s feet.

* * *

Corvo makes for quiet company. The Outsider can’t say he wants to complain about this.

It is better than having Delilah here, with the way she’d poked and prodded at the Void until it near drove him mad, with the way she bent and twisted it to her own liking. There are still jagged, narrow pathways across the Void here and there, bathed in shallow red light and growing ugly, gnarled trees out of what should’ve been barren soil. Corvo doesn’t meddle, only explores as best he can with no mark. He has not asked for it back.

The Outsider keeps an eye on him, when he’s not keeping an eye on Emily. Corvo falls only once, and when the Outsider catches the man in his arms and carries him back to floating black stone, Corvo quickly shrugs away from him, like he doesn’t wish to be touched.

The Outsider thinks that’s fair.

“How is she?” Corvo asks later. He’s stopped exploring, possibly because his pride was wounded, possibly because the Void looks the same no matter where he goes.

The Outsider folds his hands behind his back. He’s watching Emily now, and he’s very intrigued, and Corvo is not at the forefront of his thoughts at the moment. “She has allies,” he says, and pauses to see if Corvo will ask anything else.

Corvo only sits and draws his knees up to his chest, fingertips digging into his arms until his knuckles turn white.

* * *

Emily takes his mark. The Outsider can’t help being pleased.

For all of the physical features Emily took from her mother, the Outsider sees Corvo in her movements, in her thought process, in the way she scowls when frustrated. She holds her sword backwards like her father, though her slender fingers look a little odd on the hilt, when he’s so used to seeing Corvo’s large hands there.

She is very quick, and very angry, and passionate. She is also merciful. Corvo has raised her well. The Emily Kaldwin who has seen the streets of Karnaca will be a great Empress soon, if she survives.

He sees how fond she is of the city, and thinks it’s almost a shame that she was born a noble.

* * *

 

“How is she?” Corvo rasps.

He sounds upset. The Outsider raises his brow, wondering what took Corvo so long to ask if he could see his daughter. “She is investigating Anton Sokolov’s disappearance,” he says with the slightest air of disdain. “And she is unharmed.”

Corvo lets out his breath, though his shoulders remain tense. The Outsider feels a faint urge to smooth that constant wrinkle between his brows.

“Come here,” the Outsider says.

Corvo hesitates, skeptical, eyes narrowed. The Outsider watches the corners of Corvo’s mouth twitch down ever so slightly.

“I won’t bite you, my dear Corvo,” he says, mildly amused. Corvo’s cheeks color in faint embarrassment, and there’s a plainly visible reluctance in his stride. “May I?” he asks, holding his hands near Corvo’s cheeks.  
  
“Don’t do anything suspicious,” Corvo warns him.

The Outsider doesn’t like being told what to do, and so instead of just touching Corvo’s face, he kisses his forehead. Corvo makes an indignant noise and goes quiet right after, eyes distant. The Outsider releases him and goes about his business; Corvo watches his daughter for hours as she picks her way through Addermire, body tense and jumpy and his breath catching whenever she’s in danger. The Outsider wants to tell him that he worries for nothing, that he’s trained Emily well enough that the outcome is well in her favor, but he isn’t sure his word means much to Corvo at the moment.

“You marked her,” Corvo says later, after Emily has returned to the Dreadful Wale, voice quiet and unsure.

“Your Empress is almost as fascinating as you, Corvo,” the Outsider says, and it’s true; the Outsider likes Emily, and he likes her choices, and he likes what her empire might become if she takes her throne back from Delilah.

And he likes Corvo. But...details.

Corvo’s looking at him with a mixed kind of expression, like he wants to say thank you and feels guilty for being grateful, like he wants to be relieved as much as he wants to keep his daughter away from dark magic. The Abbey would have Emily’s head for this, and she’ll have to cover her hand just as Corvo has for the last fifteen years.

For now, at least, it's making her life a little easier.

“How long had you planned it?” Corvo asks after a moment. His posture is poor for once, slumped and tired, and he picks at the wrappings around his left hand. Guilt, the Outsider realizes, underneath worry and frustration.

“My dear Corvo,” the Outsider says. “Your first mistake was thinking that I ever _plan_ anything.”

Corvo’s mouth quirks at the corner. The Outsider thinks it might be a smile.

* * *

Emily kills Kirin Jindosh. Corvo flinches.

“I had hoped,” he says, after the Outsider raises a brow at him, “That I would be enough to protect her, and she’d never have to kill anyone.”

“You place too much weight upon your own shoulders, Corvo,” the Outsider says. “The enemies you and Emily have faced are unlike those of any previous reigning monarch. To expect things to be simple after all you’ve done to gain and keep that throne is foolish.”

“I didn’t expect it to be _easy_ ,” Corvo says irritably. “I expected Emily to keep her hands clean.”

“Did you?” the Outsider asks, and Corvo makes a face.

Jindosh’s carefully crafted mansion is both untouched and a complete disaster; Emily flipped no switches, but she broke enough things. She is every bit the one woman army Corvo taught her to be. No one else has ever taken down a Clockwork soldier with nothing but a sword.

“I _wanted_ her to,” Corvo says after a moment.

“But you’re proud of her,” the Outsider says, head tilted and hands folded neatly behind his back. Corvo looks odd against the muted colors of the void, with his royal blue clothes and warm, olive skin. “And for all you might wish that she never had to bloody her hands, you’re glad that you taught her to take care of herself. You’re proud of the fighter she’s become under your tutelage, and you wonder if things would be different, if only Jessamine had asked you to teach her to fight.”

Corvo’s brows knit. His mouth twists, his jaw tightens; at his side, his hands ball into fists. There’s a long silence, and the Outsider knows his question long before he asks it. “Would they be?” Corvo asks, and he looks up at the Outsider with those wounded brown eyes, and the lines in his face do little to hide his grief. Corvo has lost more than the average man, and lets himself mourn less.

“No, Corvo, they would not be,” the Outsider answers, and maybe that’s true and maybe it isn’t, but Corvo blames himself a little less, at least.

* * *

Meagan Foster offers Emily two solutions for getting into Aramis Stilton’s house. A beggar mentions a third. Emily forsakes all three and solves Jindosh’s lock herself, a quiet _fuck you_ into the Void for the late inventor.

Corvo all but beams with pride.

“What’s this?” he asks as the Outsider fashions his next gift. It’s almost heart-shaped; the Outsider can very nearly feel the way Corvo aches for Jessamine’s voice.

“What the Empress needs to see is not of this time,” the Outsider answers. The Timepiece ticks in his hand, a heartbeat of clockwork. “This will allow her to obtain what she needs.”

Corvo peeks over his shoulder. The Outsider glances back at him with no small amount of intrigue, a faint smile on his lips. This, he notes with delight, is the first time since being forced here that Corvo has approached him without being asked.

“You’re being very helpful,” Corvo says, mildly suspicious, though not complaining. His posture is relaxed for once, like he is comfortable standing so close.

“I very much dislike Delilah,” the Outsider replies.

“Mmm,” Corvo says with an equally faint smile, and it doesn’t sound like he believes that at all.

“You doubt me?”

“I doubt you’d ever tell me your reasoning outright.”

The Outsider’s smile widens. “My dear Corvo, you know me so well,” he says, and slips off to Stilton’s manor.

When the Outsider opens up the Void beneath Emily after she rescues Stilton, Corvo elects to stay away. The Outsider doesn’t question him, but Corvo looks about that lonely island in the Void after Emily’s gone, that familiar crease in his brow present again.

“Your face will freeze that way,” the Outsider teases.

Corvo’s brows only knit further. “How can you be so at ease here?” he asks.

He is not at ease here. “I have had more than four thousand years to think on my own death, Corvo,” he says, sweeping his arms wide. “Why should I let this place affect me any more than the rest of the Void? The people you see here no longer walk the earth. The knife that cut my throat is locked away. There is nothing for me to fear.”

Corvo is quiet for a moment. He’s staring down at the sacrificial table, and he’s thinking about the gazebo at Dunwall Tower, and when he meets the Outsider’s sharp black eyes, the Outsider has half a mind to think that Corvo was mourning him.

“I know this knife,” Corvo says quietly, and he reaches out to touch it before he changes his mind and withdraws his hand.

The Outsider says nothing.

* * *

Emily exchanges one Duke for another, and bids her mother farewell, and captures Delilah’s soul. Corvo turns away.

There is something about this entire situation that unnerves the Outsider, and he thinks Corvo might be that something. For as much as he prefers this man to Delilah for company, Corvo distracts him something terrible. There have been times where the Outsider was watching the Empress, only to find his attention stolen by her father. Corvo’s emotions are loud in this space, louder than his face allows them to be, and the Outsider is not sure what to do with the fact that lately, Corvo has begun bleeding a bit of fondness.

He has always been fond of Corvo. He might even say he _favored_ Corvo...if he had favorites.

Emily was grateful for his gifts, but largely put him out of her mind. Daud had come to despise him; Delilah thought herself his equal. Vera was...Vera, and deceased besides, and that lonely street orphan was deceased too, so their opinions on him meant little. Truthfully, no one’s opinion had ever meant much. But now Corvo was fond of him, and that was both terribly pleasing and a very specific kind of terrifying.

 _Fascinating_ , even.

Corvo, to his credit, does not outwardly show many signs of affection. The Outsider is still delighted by even the smallest hint of a smile.

The Outsider can’t remember if he’s ever been so enamored with one of his marked.

“Should I comfort you?” he asks, and feels foolish when Corvo looks at him strangely. It has been a long time since he felt foolish about anything.

“Is it in your nature?” Corvo asks. His legs dangle off the edge of black stone. His shoulders hang heavily. He has lost Jessamine a second time.

“It could be,” the Outsider says. “If you wanted it to be.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know,” the Outsider says, a bit frustrated. The dull light of the Void does nothing for Corvo’s complexion, nor for the silver strands in his hair, but the Outsider still thinks he is exquisite. And he thinks he would prefer it if Corvo could smile freely, if the man wasn’t so frequently plagued with grief.

“Sit with me,” Corvo says, and his voice is soft and light, like he is trying to prevent it from breaking.

So the Outsider sits, and they say nothing to each other, and Corvo brushes quiet tears on his sleeves. The Outsider puts a hand on his back. 

* * *

Delilah is not easily tricked. But Emily is very, very clever.  

Corvo stands near his statue. The Outsider stands at his side. The goal was always for Corvo to return to his world, but the Outsider is not sure how he feels about the Void being empty again. Two months of pleasant company is woefully brief after four thousand years of solitude.

“Your daughter will be a great Empress,” the Outsider says kindly. “I can’t think of a greater Empress.”

“You’re doing flattery now?” Corvo asks, and he’s smiling. He’s going home, so of course he is, but the Outsider is unsure that Corvo will remember the last two months when he’s freed from stone. He feels selfish, but he can’t manage a fully genuine smile in return.

“I don’t mean it as flattery,” he replies. “She has seen what many rulers never will, and you raised her well, Corvo.”

Corvo looks at him for a him for a moment. There is pride and gratefulness and something bittersweet in his eyes. “Thank you,” he says.

The Outsider is not often thanked, and isn’t sure how to respond. A simple _your welcome_ is not enough for what he wants to say to Corvo, but there is no point in saying what he wants to say either, not when Corvo is leaving and the Outsider can only visit him in Void-filled dreams that will leave Corvo exhausted by morning.

Corvo’s spirit is being tugged towards the statue, in any case.

“Be safe, my dear Corvo,” he says instead, a playful lilt in his voice, and turns his back.

“Outsider,” Corvo says, and when the Outsider faces him, Corvo presses a chaste kiss to his mouth.

The Outsider, for once, is utterly speechless. Corvo looks satisfied and purposeful and wide eyed all at once, and then he’s slipped into stone again, and the statue’s gone.

In Dunwall, Emily sighs in relief as black stone fades into flesh, and her father breathes again.


End file.
